


On Hearts & Glass

by thehobbem



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Other Characters Are Mentioned, Romance, Urban Fantasy, heartsmith au, no hearts were actually broken in the making of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-02 22:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17272712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehobbem/pseuds/thehobbem
Summary: Once upon a time, in a faraway land, lived two young men. One lived solely to fix heartbreaks, and the other, to bring joy to people's hearts, neglecting his own until it cracked.This is the story of how they met.





	On Hearts & Glass

**Author's Note:**

> art by the amazing [Quel](https://twitter.com/quelmdn)!

Long ago, in a time when hearts were as mendable as glass, there lived a craftsman known as the heartsmith.

In an alleyway where smells from distant lands and sights from overseas came together in a labyrinth of forgotten arts, the small heartsmithy went easily unnoticed. And yet, those who needed it always found it somehow.

And little did the heartsmith know how much he needed to be found.

 

* * *

 

A steady stream of people trickle in and out of the alleyway, but Victor ignores them in favor of staring at its narrow entrance. The street takes a sharp turn to the left and hides Marketplace from the view of those who do not have the heart to venture into it. Curious as he may be, still Victor remains, frozen in the time of a split-second decision.

Night after night and year after year, all he’s ever needed is the ice beneath his skates, the surprises it brings. Give him the bare minimum for survival and a pair of skates and he won’t need anything else, he used to say.

And he doesn’t know when that stopped being true. He doesn’t know when skating started to no longer bring him joy or surprises — but come to think of it, it may have been around the same time food started turning into smooth sand in his mouth, colors into monotonous variations of sepia, and music into nothing more than flat notes which he can no longer tell apart.

_“Your heart is broken, Vitya.”_

But if there is one constant in his life, one thing that never stops being true, it is Yakov always finding fault in Victor. Putting everything Victor does, or wants to do, under a microscope is Yakov’s most honed skill.

_“Of course not, Yakov, don’t be silly. I don’t even have someone to break my heart!”_

_“What’s more heartbreaking than that, kid?”_

Yakov being right is never an admission Victor is willing to make out loud (or to his face). But that doesn’t mean he won’t listen; Yakov’s spent years helping him find the missing pieces in his skating; it’s just happening on a more fundamental level this time.

_“Go to Marketplace. People always find what they need there.”_

_Victor scoffs. Marketplace. Who needs dusty old magic in the brand new 20th century? “How can you be so sure?”_

_A simple answer. “That’s where I found Lilia.”_

A sleepless night later and here he is: ten steps away from a solution. Ten steps are all it seems to take, when it in fact takes so much more — an uncomfortable level of honesty with oneself, for one thing.

Ten steps, and he turns left into the alleyway.

Eleven steps, and his eyes go wide, taking in a confusing maze of narrow streets, shops, stalls, vendors, and more chaos than can possibly fit into such a tiny, cramped space. A mess where none of the immaculate calm of the royal capital has bled into. The temptation to turn around and leave is there, running under his skin and begging him to leave — to go back to where things make sense. But a more careful look, a step further and a minute longer gambled, and Marketplace slowly morphs into something else: a breathing, pulsating mess of voices, music, new and old smells and smoke coming from food stalls, more enticing than they have any right to be. Revealing themselves as the hidden heart of the kingdom.

Here a fiddler creates rhythms Victor has never heard before, there a stall stacked with what is terrifyingly called “the fruit of the fire dragons”, while another sells fabrics of foreign texture and patterns. One shop displays a dusty clutter of jewelry, toys of menacing aspect and objects whose purpose Victor doesn't want to know, and a peddler nearby gleefully advertises “the best eyes in the kingdom”.

Into one street, out the next and he wanders, looking at everything and stopping for little, allowing Yakov’s words to lead the way.

_“Even if I do go, what would I even look for?”_

_Yakov shrugs. “You’ll know it when you see it.”_

“Hearts! Get a brand new heart here today! Hearts of all colors and sizes!”

Victor stops abruptly, colliding with a couple of ladies selling golden sickles; a torrent of apologies later, he turns around and searches for the voice. He finds its owner to be a dark-skinned teenager in a red-and-gold outfit that sparkles in the midday sun. There’s a faint iridescent red glow coming from a wicker basket hanging from his arm.

With the sixth sense all street vendors have, the teenager feels Victor’s lingering look and approaches him with a smile that could dazzle the blind.

“Shall we find you a heart, sir?”

“Ahh… no, thank you. I’m just looking,” says Victor, taking a peek at the inside of the basket: it’s full of hearts of all colors and materials, though most of them are classically red. What he did not expect is that they are all, in fact, heart-shaped.

“They don’t look like organs,” he mumbles. The heart seller bristles at that.

“I’m not an organ vendor! That would be Seung-gil at the western sector. No, I sell _hearts_ ,” he stresses, as if the extra emphasis fully explains it. “Are you sure I can’t interest you in one?”

“Thank you, but I already have one. It just…” he shrugs, and adds with a smile he doesn’t mean and that is pure routine at this point, “it needs some repairing, I guess.”

The heart seller’s face lights up. “Ohhh, I see! You’re looking for the heartsmith!”

Seeing Victor’s confusion, the seller takes his hand and pulls him along. They turn left at the next corner, take the second right, go past a store with nothing but sand on its show windows and a glistening golden placard that says **T I M E** , and stop in front of a small corner shop. This one has no displays, only a couple of tall, barred windows and a wooden sign with **_heartsmithy_ ** in carved letters.

“Here you are, sir! He’ll take good care of your heart!” the seller says, knocking on the door and leaving just as fast as he appeared.

At a distant “come on in!” Victor opens the door, walking into a spacious room with low hanging beams, sunlight filtering through the window bars and showing specks of dust in the air. The table in the center is covered in shards of metal, cloth, and a variety of tools he doesn’t recognize, while several shelves line the the walls and brim with books and jewelry boxes.

In a corner, a young man with a mop of ruffled black hair slowly removes something from a tin of water with a pair of tongs.

“Just a moment…” he mumbles without raising his head, eyes hidden behind brass goggles. He grabs a towel and dries off what Victor now sees is a heart of gold. After a thorough examination, the heart is lovingly placed in an empty jewelry box.

The man turns around and pushes the goggles up his head, making a bigger mess of his own hair, and— Victor holds his breath. Is that how the smith makes his money? Destroying hearts and repairing them later? He’s _beautiful_. A heartbreaker from head to toe.

Like his shop, he would be easy to miss in a crowd at first. But once you saw it, there was no going back. The eyes made of chestnut and honey, on a face crafted out of an improbable combination of soft lines and sharp angles, none of it is easily forgotten — and all of it could fill a heart till it was fit to burst.

“Good morn— uhh, afternoon,” says the smith, squinting at Victor. “Sorry, one second,” he adds, grabbing a pair of blue-rimmed glasses lying on the table and putting them on. “How can I— _oh”_ he breathes, eyes widening. Victor would have to be blind not to see the red blooming on the smith’s cheeks, and utterly heartless not to be riveted by it.

The smith hastily takes off the safety goggles off his head and gets up, trying to flatten his hair with one hand. “Uhh… hi! Hello, how can I help?”

Victor blinks. “The heart seller outside said you… repair hearts?”

“Yeah, that’s what I do!” replies the smith, smiling through the light pink covering his face. “I’m the heartsmith. What seems to be the problem?”

He gestures for him to take a seat, and Victor is grateful his body obeys: his brain is too occupied with how the lean muscles on the smith’s arms flex as he takes off his apron, and with the flash of ankles showing beneath the rolled up hem of his pants. But when their eyes meet again and the smith raises his eyebrows, Victor remembers the question.

“Um… My coach— my boss, he says my heart is broken, and... I think he may be right,” he finishes, voice going low on the last words.

The smith hums, looking at him thoughtfully. “Okay. Have you felt anything different from usual?”

Victor shifts on his seat. How does one say _I haven’t felt anything in years_ without making it sound dramatic? “Food and music, they… don’t seem the same anymore. Colors, too.”

“Right. And I suppose that affects your skating.”

“How do you know I skate?” asks Victor, astonished.

Red quickly gains on the smith’s face again. “Oh, I’m sorry, I… I’ve seen you. On the ice rink in Royal Square? I thought you wer— I thought it was beautiful,” he stammers out, ducking his head and rushing through to his next question. “So, have you given it to anyone recently?”

Victor’s eyes widen. “What, my heart? No, I… have no one to give it to.”

The smith shoots him a strange look for one fraction of a second, before moving on. “I see. And is it fully human?”

“I think so? My great-grandmother was a swan maiden, but other than that…”

“A great-grandmother is far back enough,” says the smith. “But a swan maiden? A... brave man, her husband.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘stupid’, I think,” replies Victor, biting back a smile. The light, very diplomatic pause before ‘brave’ did not go unnoticed. But all in all, his great-grandfather does not deserve such politeness.

“Yes, well,” says the smith, a smile brightening up his face and setting an uptempo pace to Victor’s heart. “I couldn’t be the one to say it.”

Victor is surprised by his own laugh — one willingly surrendered, instead of the smiles usually given out of design. It sounds rusty to his ears and fissured around the edges, but also like something he could get used to.

After a few more questions, the smith stands up and with a quiet “excuse me”, places a hand on Victor’s chest. At the touch, a rush of cold runs through his spine to the tip of his toes, leaves goosebumps in its wake, and now the smith has something in his hands: Victor’s heart, crack’d from side to side, like a curse upon him as though he were the Lady of Shalott of the new century.

He looks from the heart to the smith’s face, finding a frown there. “Is it too bad?”

“It’s… not good,” he says, brow furrowing as he delicately turns the heart around. “There’s a lot of damage. It needs work, and I’ll have to buy the right material to replace the missing pieces, so it might take a while. Could you maybe… leave it here? I don’t know when it’ll be ready, but… feel free to drop by whenever you want, to check on the progress.”

He’s never left his heart in anyone else’s hands; and therein, perhaps, lies the whole problem. He touches his own heart still in the smith’s hands: it feels as cold and fractured as it looks. “I will, then. Thank you.”

Receipt safe in his wallet and one foot out the door, Victor realizes he doesn’t have a vital piece of information. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

Another smile, and how his heart is not fixed already with just that is a question for the ages. “I’m Yuuri.”

“Yuuri,” he echoes both name and smile, stretching out his hand. “Take good care of it for me?”

The hand that shakes his is as warm as those brown eyes, and Victor wouldn’t mind holding on to it for a little longer. “I will.”

 

* * *

 

It’s past midnight when Yuuri closes his doors. He runs a hand over his face: Mr. Nekola will never learn. He _insists_ on throwing that heart of gold at people who don’t know how to look after it. That’s the fifth time it’s broken in three years.

 _And now this._ He eyes the new heart lying in the box, the dark red of the velvet lining popping sharply against its faint, broken luminescence. If he didn’t know Victor is a skater — if he hadn’t seen hundreds of his nightly performances at the Royal Square, if he didn’t have a poster of Victor in his living room — he would still be able to guess what Victor does for a living.

Only artists have a heart of glass.

Yuuri often fixes those, they shatter too easily; why, he worked on Mr. Popovich’s just a month ago! Victor’s not the first, nor will it be the last to pass by his smithy. But it’s definitely the most surprising. _“I have no one to give it to.”_

How is that possible?

 

* * *

 

Yuuri reads the note and clicks his tongue. Guang Hong doesn’t have it either, and doesn’t know when the next shipment will come.

“No luck?” Phichit asks with a sympathetic grimace. They’re both sitting at the door of the smithy, Phichit taking his lunch break and Yuuri basking in the sun he’s barely seen today, having spent all morning shut off inside.

Yuuri shakes his head. “No. I should’ve known, but… I was hoping anyway,” he sighs. The only ones who work with heartglass are heartsmiths, and there’s currently only one in the entire kingdom. He’s talked to the Nishigoris and Guang Hong, but the answer is the same: no one is in a rush to restock, unless they want to fill their shelves with a product that doesn’t sell.

“I may have to go to over to Leroy’s,” Yuuri mumbles, crumpling the note in his hands. Phichit stares at him in horror.

“You wouldn’t! It’s on the other side of town, and… you might have to talk to _JJ_ ,” he adds with an exaggerated shiver.

“Yeah, not exactly my favorite option,” Yuuri replies with a snort. JJ’s loud manners make him no one’s favorite supplier. “But I have to try. If the Leroys don’t have it, I’ll have to wait for the southern merchants, and they only come in the spring. I can’t ask Victor to wait until— oh _oh my gods, hi!”_

Whatever Yuuri can or cannot ask disappears in a puff of smoke when an enormous poodle stops in front of him, tail wagging and tongue lolling out, waiting to be acknowledged. Yuuri opens his arms for her, and the poodle accepts the invitation so enthusiastically she knocks him back. Not that he minds it one bit.

He’s still cooing at her and ruffling her ears when Phichit clears his throat. “Um, Yuuri?”

Looking up, he notices the poodle has a collar, which is connected to a leash, which is connected to a hand, which is connected to—

“Victor, hi!” He stands up in a flash, wiping dog slobber from his face. Of course Yuuri would have a knack for being caught in the most undignified, disheveled of states whenever Victor is around.

“I should be apologizing for her, but… it seems you’re friends already,” says Victor with a light chuckle. He gives the leash a gentle tug to get his poodle’s attention. “Yuuri, meet Makkachin. Makka, this is Yuuri, the heartsmith.”

“And _this_ is the end of my lunch break!” says Phichit, grabbing his basket of hearts. “Glad to see you again, sir! Bye, Yuuri, see you later!”

Once Phichit disappears around the corner, Yuuri turns to Victor again. “Came to check on the heart? Because … well, to be frank I—”

“No, no, not at all!” Victor reassures him. “It’s only been three days, you said you needed time, right? No, I just thought I’d bring you this as a ‘thank you’,” he adds, handing him a paper bag. When Yuuri opens it, a warm smell wafts up and makes his mouth water: the bag is full of hot (weird) fried buns.

“What are these?” he asks, partly out of curiosity, partly in the hope of covering the grumbles coming from his stomach. He hasn’t eaten in _hours_.

“Pirozhki! The apprentice at our shop is really good at making them, so I wanted to bring you some. Lunch is on me today,” Victor finishes with a wink that almost kills Yuuri on the spot. Enough that Victor is the most beautiful skater in the realm, and the most beautiful man in all the land; does he have to be nice, thoughtful and charming in person as well? At that pace, Yuuri will be the one with heart problems.

He smiles, with that treacherous blush taking over again. “Thank you! Do you, um. Want to share them?”

If lunch is usually a brief, lonely affair squeezed in between broken hearts, today it takes most of his afternoon. Yuuri’s entire time and attention are consumed by Victor and his thousand questions (and Makkachin’s shameless begging for scraps). By the end of the day, Victor leaves knowing most everything about Yuuri: his birthday, his favorite food, his favorite color, how much he loves poodles, the exact location and working hours of his parents’ bathing house for the soul, the kinds of concoctions one can find at his sister’s potion shop. Yuuri, on his turn, only learned Victor’s age and day job at Feltsman’s, the upscale skate shop in the District of Saint Peter.

Victor comes by again two days later, and Yuuri learns something new: that his own heart rate has taken to picking up terribly around Victor. It doesn’t help that he stays the whole day, comfortably sitting on a stool with his elbows on the table and chin on his hands, chatting when possible and keeping his silence when Yuuri needs to focus on a task. Throughout the rest of the day, he watches him work with curious eyes, as if there were nothing more enthralling than heartsmithing. That night, Yuuri goes to sleep with his heart in his throat.

When he opens shop after lunch the very next day, it’s only to be surprised by a loud gasp and a cheerful bark outside, followed by the sight of a horrified Victor staring at him, and a happy Makkachin by his side.

“Yuuuuri! It’s Sunday! Don’t you ever take a day off?”

 _Not really_ doesn’t seem to be the correct answer, but Yuuri has no other. Victor’s insistence soon wins him out: after a quick change out of his work clothes and into something not covered in soot, Yuuri finds himself holding Makkachin’s leash as he and Victor wander around the Lilac Gardens, seamlessly blending in with the dozens of other couples out on their afternoon stroll.

The hours drip by, lazily turning into evening as they talk about everything — work, poodles, eastern cuisine, dancing, skating. It’s only when the number of people in the park start to ebb away with sunlight that Yuuri realizes they’re heading towards the Royal Square.

“Oh, you… you must have a performance tonight, right?” he asks, the thought of the stroll being cut short taking a bite off his heart.

Victor shakes his head. “No, I haven’t been performing.” With the question on Yuuri’s face too obvious, he adds with a smile that was anything but, “I can’t surprise people with my skating if I can’t put my heart in it. So I’m just... taking a break.”

Neither of them says anything after that, and soon they’re at the ice rink in the square, where people still skate despite the late hour and the need for the street lamps. Victor throws him a sideway glance, full of curiosity and some begging he’s probably picked up from Makkachin throughout the years.

“We could… ” he says, vaguely gesturing towards the rink.

Yuuri’s eyes go round. “You mean, you… you want to go skating? Together?”

“That’s the idea, yes,” said Victor, a heart-shaped smile blooming on his face and leaving Yuuri speechless. When no protest comes, Victor leads him to the stand of rental skates; after safely tying Makkachin, Victor catches Yuuri taking off his glasses and putting them in his coat pocket.

“Can you see well without them?” he asks.

Yuuri gives a one-shoulder shrug. “Kind of? Anything near me is okay, but if you go too far you’ll be nothing but a blur,” he jokes.

“Huh. Well, in that case,” says Victor, twining their fingers together, “you better stay close to me.”

How is it that he can take Yuuri’s hand and heart in one simple move? And as they skate side by side through the evening, he doesn’t let go of either — nor as early evening turns into late night and they are the only ones left in the rink. His hand is still there as they walk back to Marketplace, undeniably there as Victor places a kiss on his ring finger and wishes him a good night.

Still there, indelible in Yuuri’s memory, as he tries to sleep through the loud beating of his heart.

 

* * *

 

On Monday, Yuuri comes back empty-handed from Leroy’s. They were his last hope for some heartglass; without them, he has no option but wait for the southern merchants. The disappointment is somewhat softened when Victor drops by at the end of the day and stays for dinner.

A Thursday, and it’s such a beautiful day, wouldn’t he like to join Victor and Makka on their evening walk? Friday night, and they go out for dinner and dancing at the Baranovskaya Club, for what is the first time of many.

When spring comes around, Yuuri finally plucks up the courage to go to Feltsman’s at lunchtime and take the pork cutlet bowl he’s long promised Victor. The reward is instant: he has no idea what _vkusno_ means, but the delight on Victor’s face is universal.

“Funny,” Victor says between bites, “I don’t remember the last time I could actually _taste_ any other food — but this, this is so good!”

Yuuri beams. “That’s just how good katsudon is!”

It takes no time for the two shop assistants, Mila and Yuri, to shamelessly ask him for their own portion next time — and even less for Yuuri to become a regular at the shop. He brings them lunch once a week, and sometimes a potion made by his sister, to alleviate the backache Yuri’s grandpa has been having lately. He’s also gotten a new pair of skates from Mr. Feltsman himself (something about “helping this moron over here”).

Spring also brings the southern merchants back from their year-long journey throughout the Four Realms. They brave desert, ocean and mountains to find the rarest merchandise, but not even they have heartglass this time. When they leave, they take Yuuri’s last hope with them (maybe to sell in the northern kingdom).

“What are you going to do?” asks Phichit, who’s purchased new fabrics for himself and a few rare hearts. None made of glass, unfortunately.

“The only thing I can do,” Yuuri sighs, as they both watch the caravan leave Marketplace.

A warm spring night, and it’s time. After closing the smithy and neatly spreading out all the tools he’d need on the table, Yuuri sets out to work. Good thing he has that one last resort; a simple, easy solution, one he could never withhold from Victor.

He brings his hands to his chest. A beat, a sudden loss of warmth, and his heart is in his hands, glass shimmering against the lamp light just like it did years ago, when Yuuri wondered what his own heart looked like. A little dustier than he remembers, and far warmer, but whole. As he carefully takes piece after piece from it, he reasons it will still be usable when he’s done; he doesn’t needed much anyway, and can well live with that heartbreak.

Night, and Yuuri works, picking his own heart apart until it cracks. Night, and Victor’s heart comes together again, little by little, like an ancient piece of pottery mended with gold. Sunrise, and Yuuri finishes his handiwork just in time to hear the familiar call outside.

“Hearts! Get a brand new heart here today!”

 

* * *

 

“Yuuri, this is incredible! I can’t believe you did it!”

Victor turns his new(ish) heart over and over in his hands, fascinated; Yuuri takes one last critical look at it, but even he has to concede that the heart is now a far cry from what it was. When Victor asks him how much the heartglass cost, he shrugs it off and waves the material fee away with a simple “it cost me nothing”.

“Now, you can see there are still some light fissures here and here,” says Yuuri, pointing them out as he speaks, “but these will heal on their own, now that it’s whole again. Just give them some time,” he finishes with a smile.

Once the heart is back where it belongs, they stand around in silence, the imminent goodbye filling the new cracks in Yuuri’s heart and causing new ones. He shifts his weight from one leg to another. There’s no more “see you on Sunday”, no longer a reason for Victor to spend time with him. He’s been on borrowed time from the beginning, and now the loan is over.

Victor opens his mouth — but Makkachin startles both of them with a low whine. “Oh, right, sorry Makka! Yes, let’s go.” He turns to Yuuri, “Sorry, it’s dinner time for her.”

Yuuri assures him it’s alright. When the door closes, he resists the temptation of opening it and watching Victor walk away with much more than pieces of his heart.

 

* * *

 

Wednesday, and Yuuri has his quick, solitary lunch in his kitchen, made of food that tastes more or less like nothing. Friday night, and he stays in his smithy working on a broken heart that isn’t his. Saturday, and he ignores the heartache that comes with the thought of Victor.

Sunday, and someone knocks on his door. “Delivery to Mr. Katsuki!”

Frowning, Yuuri opens it: he can’t see the delivery boy’s face, hidden behind a huge basket, on top of which lies a single, long-stemmed blue rose and a letter. Yuuri signs for them and takes it all back inside — but as soon as he closes the door, the basket in his arms _barks_. He stares at it, petrified, and it takes another bark for him to hastily lift the lid: a tiny brown poodle pops out, with a blue ribbon around his neck.

Yuuri takes him out of the basket, heart racing at a thousand miles per hour, and opens the letter.

_Dear Yuuri:_

_I can never thank you enough for what you’ve done for me. It’s because of you that I can finally experience life_ _and ~~lo~~ _ _and all it has to offer. I hope you’ll accept these tokens of my_ ~~_aff_ ~~ _gratitude. I know how much you love Makka, so I thought another poodle could use some of that love as well!_

_It’s also thanks to you that I can skate with all of my heart. I’ll be performing again this Sunday, and would be delighted if you could come and see it._

_Love,_

_Victor_

 

* * *

 

The sound of applause, long a familiar one to Victor, now rings foreign to his ears as he skates around the rink and waves at his audience.

Night after night and year after year, he’s fed off their adoration and given himself to the ice in a wordless deal. What no one warned him about is that the ice is a cruel mistress. It grants you its favor but never stops demanding more, like a lover who can’t and won’t be sated, no matter how much of yourself you sacrifice at its feet. Night after night and year after year Victor gave himself away, relinquished his heart to the ice and to those who watched, never keeping any of it for himself.

And now that he finally has it back, it doesn’t matter whether it’s whole again or not. It belongs to someone else now.

One more lap around the rink and he takes center stage on the ice in the midst of the sudden silence. When the first bars of his aria play, he raises his head in slow, perfect time with them — with the ease of a life spent in a pantomime of itself — and his gaze falls on the one face he’s able to pick out of a crowd anywhere, anytime.

And so it happens that, for the first time in forever, Victor skates not for the ice or for the crowd but for himself, for the only audience he could spend the rest of his life skating for (skating to). Every spin screams a confession of everything he does not yet have the courage to whisper, every jump a plea for one single heart to listen, to watch, to  _stay_. Every turn a chance to lock eyes, make him hear the forever in hope — and at every turn those eyes follow him like a magnet.

When the last notes echoe and disappear, engulfed in waves of applause, he bows to the public out of instinct, his heart in a very different place. Yuri and Mila go around the rink collecting the flowers and coins thrown his way, but for Victor there’s no looking away from Yuuri — the only question he hasn’t asked, and the only answer he longs for.

The crowd is slow to disperse. Yakov has Things To Say about his performance. Mila has hugs to give Yuuri (with a generous serving of berating from Yuri). But they do all eventually go away, and like a prayer heard, Yuuri stays.

As Victor glides towards him, he sees Yuuri’s hand holding his chest, bunching up a little of the fabric, his smile a stark contrast to his painfully white knuckles. He hurries, stopping abruptly at the railing.

“Yuuri, are you okay?!”

“What?” Yuuri’s eyes widen, until he realizes his own grip on the shirt. He lets go with a faint laugh and a shrug. “Yes, I’m fine, don’t worry.”

“Could the heartsmith be having heart problems?” Victor jokes. To his surprise, Yuuri blushes and looks away, dismissing the comment. But the shirt wrinkled at his chest tells a different story. Is Yuuri in pain? If he’s having any chest p—

_“It cost me nothing.”_

The air in Victor’s lungs leaves him all at once. The thought is crazy, absurd, unacceptable… but if real, it will also be his answer.

“Yuuri,” he reaches over the railing and takes one of his hands — softly, like trying not to scare off a baby deer, “where did you get the heartglass?”

“What— that… what does it matter?” he asks, that telling blush taking over again. He really is too easy to read sometimes.

Victor smiles, and maybe his hands are shaking, but that’s not important. “It does. See, I don’t want to get my hopes up about my supplier.”

Yuuri opens his mouth and closes it. Blinks. Pushes his glasses up his nose, then takes them off to clean them on his own shirt. Clean _what_ is an excellent question, as the glasses are pristine already. But Victor says nothing about it.

“I, um… ” Yuuri clears his throat and frowns, giving his spotless lenses a very meticulous examination, “I happen to have a glass heart too, so… it was all quite simple, really. So I suppose… I’m your supplier,” he says, looking at him firmly. Daring, even.

“I see,” Victor replies, leaning on the railing, smile going from one ear to another. “But now you’re the one having heart problems. I do know a heartsmith, but I’m afraid I can’t recommend him.”

Yuuri hums, eyes swimming with amusement. “Really?” Putting his glasses back on without another word, he walks towards the exit of the rink. Victor follows on his side of the rink. He’d follow him across continents, if necessary.

“Really. Don’t want to share him. But,” he adds as they both come to a stop at the exit, “I could share my heart. If you wanted.”

Yuuri cocks his head, as if weighing the pros and cons of such a proposition, and — oh, he’s fixed his heart _too_ well. It won’t stop trying to beat its way out of its cage, with vigor it did not previously possess.

Before he can get another word out, Yuuri tugs him closer by his collar and kisses him.

There’s a list of things Victor knows a heart is supposed to do: beat inside people’s chests until their dying breath is one. Pump blood. Break sometimes and pick itself off the ground. But _sing_ is a new addition, and a very welcome one, too. One he’s pretty sure his can only do in Yuuri’s hands. As for beating until his dying breath, he wouldn’t mind it if it were right here, as he melts into Yuuri’s arms and lips.

When Yuuri slowly pulls away, his smile shines brighter than the street lamps, a perfect reflection of Victor’s own.

“And,” Victor says, twining his hand through Yuuri’s and bringing it to his heart, “since we’re sharing hearts now, we could share some dinner as well?”

“Sounds like a plan,” says Yuuri with a light laugh.

It isn’t a long walk from the Royal Square, but they take their time getting there. By the time they make their way into the narrow streets of Marketplace, some shops are already closed, and stalls are being covered for the night. But Marketplace itself never stops, and when the door of the heartsmithy closes behind them, they can still hear a familiar voice enthusiastically announcing:

“Hearts! Hearts of all shapes and sizes! Find what you need right here!”

 

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this webcomic](https://imgur.com/gallery/iRDA2A8), which is amazing and broke my heart (no pun intended).
> 
> This was originally written for the [YOIfantasyzine](http://yoifantasyzine.tumblr.com) back in the middle of 2018! I was struggling at the beginning, because all ideas for High Fantasy I had either didn't work well, or were too ambitious to be executed within the required word count - until I remembered this comic, and I knew _right away_ what I had to write. It's much simpler than everything else I'd thought of, very low-key fantasy, but I guess it's the simplicity of the thing that drew me to it.
> 
> I was also incredibly lucky that Quel ([twitter](https://twitter.com/quelmdn)/[tumblr](http://tosquinha.tumblr.com)) agreed to collab! She created this *stunning* bookmark for the zine based on my story, and I wanna cry everytime I look at it. Thank you so much, Quel! You're an absolute fairy queen!
> 
> Thank you to [Rae](http://extranikiforov.tumblr.com/), [Penelopedulysses](https://penelopedulysses.tumblr.com/) and [sim](https://handsingsweapon.tumblr.com/) for proofreading it for me as well! *blows kiss at these amazing people*
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thehobbem.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/thehobbem)!


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